Green Dragon (2001)

Powerful

Overrated

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The Green Dragon is not particularly a story of the Vietnam war but of the refugees of every war: Their fear for themselves, their missing family members and friends, and their fear of the unknown culture they are being thrust into. Their hopes and their dreams, also. The story itself is about the easy interaction between the little boy who is looking for his lost mother and the black American cook, and the uneasy interaction between the adults of both nations. The Vietnamese characters are very real in their humanity - good, bad, young, old. The film introduces certain aspects of Vietnamese culture (polygamy - filial devotion) that few Americans are acquainted with. It should be noted that the main Vietnamese actor, Don Duong, upon his return to Vietnam was put under house arrest for 6 months for "embarrassing the Vietnamese people".

A truly great film that can only be fully appreciated by people who lived through such times. Self-hating Americans will despise the film for its (mostly) pro-American sentiments. The movie offers a brief critique of American foreign policy during the Vietnam War, but that's not what it's ultimately about. It's about loss and family and faith, and that's all there is to it. The most haunting image to me is the woman who refuses to leave the camp even after she's found a sponsor, fearing what is waiting for her outside. The soldiers have to drag her out by force because she's so terrified. IT's sequences like that that comes from personal experience and can't be fabricated. The filmmakers probably lived through this themselves (I don't know, I don't know them or know their background) to be able to write/direct such a moving film. Sure, it's sentimental, but so what? People who dislike this movie because it's somehow TOO sentimental needs to call the cops because they lost their heart and soul somewhere along the way.

Along Southern California's coast, midway between Los Angeles and San Diego, sprawls Camp Pendelton, home to about 50,000 U.S. Marines. Less than an hour's drive to the north, not far from Disneyland, is a Vietnamese enclave of about 200,000 without political boundaries which the road signs call "Little Saigon". "Green Dragon" peers into the lives of a handful of Vietnamese who, in 1975 during the fall of Saigon, occupied a refugee camp at Camp Pendelton and went on to be assimilated into American society and establish communities such as "Little Saigon".Part history lesson and part drama, "Green Dragon" is sensitive look at a people in flux agonizing over their expatriation and fragmentation while coming to grips with an uncertain future. The film is a somewhat uneven and austere hodgepodge with the look of a low budget indie. However, what it lacks in embellishments it makes up for in nobility of purpose and should be appreciated by those with a special interest in the time and the people involved. (C)

This film went beyond anything I had ever expected it to be. The acting was incredible, the scenes were moving and the characters memorable and beautiful. I was so happy to see Patrick Swayze back and looking good and of course Forest Whitaker was fabulous. His relationship with the young Mihn was touching. Please, go rent this movie; you won't regret it.10/10*